Texas Voter Identification Law Blocked by Justice Department as Biased

By Seth Stern -
Mar 12, 2012

The Obama administration blocked
Texas (BEESTX)’s new law requiring voters to show government-issued photo
identification at the polls, escalating a partisan dispute over
voting restrictions.

The U.S. Justice Department used its power under the Voting
Rights Act to halt the Texas law, saying in a letter to the
state today that the measure may disproportionately harm
Hispanics. The department in December blocked a similar law in
South Carolina (NFSESC).

Democrats have objected to the voter ID laws as impediments
to minority voting while Republicans have said they protect the
integrity of elections. Republican officials in Texas, one of
eight states that passed voter identification laws last year,
said the administration has no valid reason to challenge the
measure.

“Their denial is yet another example of the Obama
administration’s continuing and pervasive federal overreach,”
Texas Governor Rick Perry said in a statement.

The Justice Department’s decision isn’t final. Texas and
South Carolina have filed suit in federal court in Washington
seeking permission to enforce their photo ID requirements.

Before blocking South Carolina’s law, the last time the
Justice Department challenged a state voter identification
measure under the Voting Rights Act was in 1994.

History Binds States

Texas and South Carolina are among 16 states or portions of
states that must obtain permission from the Justice Department
or a federal court in Washington before redrawing their district
lines or changing election procedures because of a history of
voting rights violations.

Hispanic registered voters in Texas are 47 percent to 120
percent more likely to lack the required identification than
non-Hispanic voters, the Justice Department said in its letter.
Texas has 12.9 million registered voters of whom 2.81 million
are Hispanic.

“Even using the data most favorable to the state,
Hispanics disproportionately lack either a driver’s license or a
personal identification card,” Thomas Perez, head of the
Justice Department’s civil rights division, wrote in the letter
to Keith Ingram, the director of elections for the Texas
Secretary of State.

The Voting Rights Act puts the burden on Texas to prove its
law wouldn’t interfere with minorities’ ability to vote.

‘Federal Overreach’

Representative Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican and chairman
of the House Judiciary Committee, said in a statement that the
Justice Department’s action is an example of the
administration’s “abuse of executive authority.”

“It’s a good sign that the Department of Justice is
stepping into the jurisdictions where it can to stop these laws
in their tracks,” said Nancy Abudu, a senior staff attorney
with the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project in Atlanta,

Under the Texas law signed last year by Perry, voters who
arrive at the polls without one of seven acceptable forms of
photo IDs issued by the state or federal government, including
concealed carry handgun permits, would be given a provisional
ballot, according to the Texas Secretary of State’s website.

Those ballots would count only if voters bring an approved
ID to the registrar’s office within six days of the election.

‘Minor Inconveniences’

The law exempts mail-in ballots and voters with significant
disabilities or religious objections to being photographed.

The law’s requirements “entail minor inconveniences on
exercising the right to vote,” Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said in his court filing on Jan. 24.

The photo ID law would disproportionately affect poor and
minority voters, who are least likely to have any of the
required forms of identification or the documentation needed to
obtain one, said Luis Figueroa, a San Antonio, Texas-based
legislative staff attorney with the Mexican American Legal
Defense and Educational Fund. It also would hurt students
because college or university IDs would not be accepted,
Figueroa said.

The photo ID requirement could suppress minority turnout by
three percent to five percent in Harris County, where Houston is
located, and give Republicans an edge in local elections, said
Carroll Robinson, a professor at Texas Southern University in
Houston and a former city council member.

Election Integrity

“We’re going to disenfranchise significant numbers of
minority voters as they become more and more the majority in
Texas,” Robinson said.

Patricia Harless, a Republican state representative, said
concerns among constituents about “the integrity of elections”
rather than possible partisan advantage explains why she
sponsored the voter ID measure last year. The law reduces the
possibility of fraud, she said.

Lawmakers excluded student IDs because “we wanted a form
of identification that was easily recognized by the poll workers
at the election site,” Harless said.

Voters 65 and older automatically qualify to cast ballots
by mail, which requires no ID, and the state will provide free
voter identification cards.

“We worked really hard to make sure we met the
constitutional requirements,” Harless said.

Lacking State ID

The Obama administration blocked South Carolina’s law in
December after concluding minorities in the state are almost 20
percent more likely to lack state-issued identification than
white registered voters.

The Justice Department asked for similar statistics from
Texas, which said it doesn’t collect the kind of racial data
needed to accurately determine how many of the state’s
registered voters don’t have a driver’s license or state ID card
are black or Hispanic. Texas provided data based on Hispanic
surnames and no data on the impact on black voters, according to
the Justice Department.

Jasmine Price, a sophomore at Prairie View A&M University,
a historically black college 30 miles from Houston, said the law
would make it harder for her to vote in person in Texas, as
she’d prefer, rather than by absentee ballot in her home state,
Arkansas.

Price, 19, said if the law takes effect, she’ll try to find
the time in between a full course load and three shifts a week
as a manager at a Houston sporting goods store to drive seven
miles from campus to the nearest state Department of Public
Safety office that issues IDs.

Literacy Tests

“My forefathers had it even harder to vote -- they had to
pass literacy tests -- but they made sure they did what they had
to do so that their vote could count,” said Price, who is
black. “So if they say I have to go to the DPS office, as much
as an inconvenience as it is to go there, that’s what I’m going
to do.”

Alabama, where the voter ID law is not scheduled to go into
effect until 2014, and Mississippi, where lawmakers haven’t
adopted legislation to implement a citizen initiative approving
a similar requirement, would also have to obtain Justice
Department or federal court approval.

In Wisconsin, which doesn’t need to obtain the same kind of
advance approval under federal law as Texas does, two state
judges have temporarily blocked a voter ID requirement.

The latest ruling today in a challenge by the League of
Women Voters came six days after a second judge ruled in a
separate suit by the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People against Governor Scott Walker.